Watch Together Stopped Working

General Discussions
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43

From what I know - they are keeping an eye on this thread and know it’s broken. Give them time to fix it I guess. It’s a pretty huge feature. I get the car analogy, but if they had to give out free temporary plex passes to people they’d be busy with that lol.

I get your frustration. Watch Together is my CORE FOUNDATION. Without it, I would just go to Jellyfin. Only thing keeping me and most people I speak to with Plex. In the meantime do what I do, “3 2 1 GO” countdown. It’s ghetto as hell but it works. Have your friend play content on your library and pause at 0:00. You do the same. Count it down and hit play.

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44

Hi all, apologies for the delayed reply. The issue that originally broke the Watch Together feature on Android devices was reverted in 10.11.0, so there must be something else that is causing it.

First, 10.11.0 version was released to everyone on March 11, could everyone confirm they are on this version and check if they are still experiencing the issue?

If so, what exactly are you seeing when you try to initiate a Watch Together session? Could you reproduce the issue and send me the logs? Thanks!

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45

Can confirm 10.11.183 fixed everything! I think other client also needed an update to this version and perhaps it wasn’t pushed to the Fire TV store?

46

I can confirm that my friend updated to 10.11.183 (as the Critic said) on the 14th. It DOES work for us now!! She has Fire TV, and I usually initiate from Roku.

Thanks to everyone at plex who helped fix this, and to The Critic for all his vital input!

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48

As of now 22:28 17th March, this appears to be broken again?

Can anyone confirm?

Edit: seems some sort of api that is down? The whole “friends” system seems to not function at the moment, even viewing your own profile

49

Tested yesterday and it is back working

50

As of Saturday, March 23, 2024; it’s intermittent. Successfully performed a Watch Together with another PLEX user watching The Last of Us S1.E3 ∙ Long, Long Time and it worked great. Right after that, we tried watching together, Road House (2024) and it would not work regardless of how many times we tried it and joining and rejoining and inviting and reinventing and canceling and starting over. Very frustrating and a waste of time. Please please please fix this. It’s one of the wonderful features especially when some people are still reluctant and/or cannot leave home, this feature brings people together virtually. Thank you.

51

I am also unable to start Watch Together from my Nvidia shield (where the other user is using a Roku stick). Content is h264 and direct streamable otherwise.

52

This issue is still occurring for me. Any updates from Plex?

53

I am having zero issues in others joining. the issue i’m having now which is here: is very erratic functioning of watch together.

I also included a full log from a portion displaying the problem full well…no Plex response yet.

54

Still a problem for me and family members I am trying to watch together with in other parts of the US from my location. When it worked well, it was a great way for our family to have some viewing time together virtually due to our being spread out in different locations. Now, it’s kind of worthless.

55

Issue has reared it’s ugly head again. NVIDIA Shiel to LG watch together sessions are broken. Exactly the same as posted in this thread weeks and months ago.

56

Tried to use watch together on the Nvidia shield again tonight (other client was a Hisense TV), got the same Unable to Play Media error. Happy to provide logs.

57

Thankfully I’m not alone. I have this interesting problem on Shield where other person can join - it plays - and then all of a sudden it says “User x Left”. Or it suddenly will switch my stream to OPUS transcode for no bloody reason. It’s brutal it’s broken. It’s so badly broken that we don’t even use watch together anymore. We have resorted to “3…2…1” synchronization. IT SUCKS.

58

Yes, our Watch Together also switches to OPUS transcoding all the time.

Really annoying that way.

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59

Any updates from Plex now that the problem remains unresolved 3 mo ths later? I have consistently been unable to watch together using any co.bi action of the Nvidia shield, an LG OLED smart TV, and a Hisense Smart TV.

60

I’m also having this issue watching with a friend who primarily uses Apple TV, the direct play/opus transcoding problem. It’s especially problematic when they have to change their subs to something else, I have to leave, restart my Shield and then attempt to rejoin or we desync and I not only get a black screen but the audio continues after closing the app. They experience the loop instead. It had been fine but I updated my app last week after not doing so for a few months. Something changed for sure.

61

Team Plex every week meeting…discussing useless features…while Watch Together is broker than heck

62

Hey Justina,

Any update on this. I still get “Unable to Play Media” errors every time I try to start a watch together on Nvidia shield. And I end up just having all parties press play simultaneously (all three sometimes using my Plex server). So, would love anyone’s eyes on the problem. Thanks.

63

I’m getting the same thing with Plex Web and the XBox Series Plex app - Whenever the XBox user attempts to enter a watch together session (either through creating one, or being invited to one) it immediately drops them back to the previous screen. Normal playback works fine.

PMS Version 1.40.4.8679 (With Plex Pass)
Plex Web Version 4.132.2
Plex XBox Version 10.0.25398.4909